Where Have You Gone, Elie Wiesel?

Over sixty years have gone by since the last of the gas chambers and ovens were shut down. Yet, today, like in the 1930s, a new Hitler has taken the world's stage. He is unafraid to espouse the exact same ideas as his mentor, Adolph Hitler.

Harry W. Weber, 19/11/06 13:19

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Harry W. Weber

Harry W. Weber is a C.P.A. (U.S., Israel) and a political commentator whose articles appear in the <i>Hatzofeh</i> newspaper.

No one has expressed the horrors of the Holocaust in more anguished eloquence and in more searing prose for the past fifty years than Elie Wiesel. As a survivor of the Holocaust, he has become a beacon of hope in the dark aftermath of Western civilization's ghoulish attempt to apply high-tech mass murder in the service of unspeakable hatred of fellow human beings.

Over sixty years have gone by since the last of the gas chambers and ovens were shut down. Yet, today, like in the 1930s, a new Hitler has taken the world's stage. He is unafraid to espouse the exact same ideas as his mentor, Adolph Hitler. His plan is clear - he repeats it publicly on an almost daily basis - to eliminate the State of Israel. Since the state is the home of some five million Jews, almost half the world's Jewish population, he is effectively calling for a second Holocaust -- the mass murder of the survivors of the first Holocaust, they and their children and grandchildren.

The fact that such a madman was able to rise to become president of a great nation, Iran, should be mind boggling in itself. But sadly, it isn't, for the entire Muslim world, in the grip of a spell of hatred -- against the West and in particular against Israel -- seems perfectly comfortable to listen to, and even silently approve of, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's outspoken plan to carry out another Holocaust.

Only sixty years have elapsed since the first Holocaust, yet today leaders from Indonesia to Malaysia, from Iran to Lebanon and Gaza - from wherever Moslems live - flout their aspirations to kill as many Jews as possible. Ahmadinejad is simply more ambitious, not content with suicide attacks that kill only tens of innocents at a time. He is intent on even outdoing Osama Bin-Laden, and bringing about a"final solution to the Jewish problem," a la Hitler.

Let the West make no mistake. Hitler was not content with "just" killing millions of Jews, and he sought continental and even global domination. So, too, does his Muslim reincarnation, Ahmadinejad, seek to destroy the five million Jews in Israel on his way to conquering Western civilization. He is the Shiite, and more virulent, strain of Bin-Laden's radical Sunni hatred of all that is Western civilization. Although Bin-Laden sought the bomb unsuccessfully, Ahmadinejad is determined to get it, unless he is stopped.

Yet, the world sits by calmly. The United Nations discusses whether or not to impose sanctions on the renegade state that this madman heads. The two authoritarian members of the Security Council, Russia and China, even oppose sanctions. European states, whom one would think would be most sensitive to the earliest signs of anti-Semitic cancerous growths around the globe, seem incredibly nonchalant and unperturbed.

Even the United States, Israel's only real ally, and the only state possessing a clear moral compass, is hesitant in taking on the monster Ahmadinejad. In retrospect, had the US, Britain - anybody - sent agents to kill Hitler in 1933, 1935 or even in 1938, the world today would have been so much better off. How many Nobel Prize-winning physicists, chemists, economists, biologists have we lost forever due to that one monster? How many lives could have been saved of the six million who were not? How many Elie Wiesels could have graced the culture of our world?

Elie Wiesel, you are the great witness to the horrors of the Holocaust and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. The first Holocaust happened because people refused to believe it could happen. Your cry in Night was vital in making the world accept guilt for its actions and inactions that led to the Holocaust. But your job is not over. A new Hitler is on the world's stage. He is Adolph Hitler's reincarnation. You cannot live only to cry for the first Holocaust. You must cry out to prevent a second Holocaust.

Nobody knows exactly when, but the day Iran gets the bomb is the day that Israel's days will be numbered. Time is running out. You, Mr. Wiesel, and only you, have the moral standing to call upon the US to eliminate either the second Hitler, or his ability to carry out his plan. Where have you gone, Elie Wiesel?